In the Cloud, Open Source Tools Offer Freedom from Old-school Practices

As The Register notes, Microsoft corporate strategy leader Rolf Harms spoke at the Cloud Connect conference in California this week, and said that "horseless carriage syndrome" typifies today's cloud computing business. He was referring to the fact that in the early days of the automobile, cars were designed very much like the carriages that had previously been powered by horses, with some of them even containing places to put a whip. "When you think about a new paradigm, it's very hard to do so without putting it in the context of the existing mindset," Harms noted. There are indeed signs that the cloud computing scene shows signs of horseless carriage syndrome, but that's exactly why open source cloud efforts show extreme promise.